Dr Roger Miles

Financial practitioner turned specialist researcher in the field of regulated Conduct

Dr Roger Miles researches human-factor risks among regulated financial providers worldwide, helping steer their responses to new Conduct regulations, Culture Audits and capital charges against Reputation Risk. He convenes knowledge sharing groups of senior executives including forums at UK Finance, whose Conduct and Culture Academy he co-founded in 2017.

Following audit practice with PwC he advised the Boards of large publicly listed companies in the UK, EU and US as a partner in investor relations firm Georgeson & Co. He was Director of Communications and Enterprises for the BBA (under Sir Brian Pitman), UK corporate affairs lead at FBE in Brussels, and later a Head of Risk Communications in HM Civil Service, before giving all that up to requalify as a risk psychologist and university lecturer.

He frequently works by invitation directly with firms’ senior leaders on in-house initiatives to develop their frameworks for conduct risk and culture.

With research among more than 400 firms participating in UK Finance Conduct sessions since 2016, he has amassed a unique exemplar body of conduct programmes, reporting designs, indicators and definitions. He welcomes sharing these insights with UK Finance attendees, to inform discussions of ‘exemplary practice’ in measurement and reporting on conduct, culture and reputation.

Session attendees consistently rate him 5* / 95-100% for “expertise”, “ease of understanding”, “open and engaging”, and “enjoyable experience”. Each year he leads small-group interactive workshops for more than 1000 attested Senior Managers in financial firms; since 2010 he has taught one-to-one or in small groups, 10,000+ leaders and divisional managers in financial, professional and government service.

His research often uses language analytics and specialist ‘sensitive topic research’ techniques to identify previously unvoiced concerns. These findings, unique to each firm, guide the design of the firm’s framework of human-factor risk indicators and reports, encouraging the start of productive “conduct conversations” at all levels, embedding spontaneous best practice in risk reporting.

He lectures as a visiting SME at business schools in Cambridge and London, and at UK Defence Academy; and moderates cross-industry working groups for Board appointees, Compliance, Legal and HR professionals.

His published work includes the financial sector’s popular handbook Conduct Risk Management: A behavioural approach (2017) and Culture Audit: Reporting on behaviour to conduct regulators (2021), which includes chapters co-authored with senior regulators in the UK, EU, US and APAC. (Both titles available to UK Finance session attendees at a special discount). He co-edits the Encyclopaedia of Key Psychology Concepts for the London School of Economics annual Behavioral Economics Guides and is a contributing editor at Thomson Reuters Regulatory Intelligence.

In 2006-7, using live observation and narrative research, he analysed how banks were ‘gaming’ their public reporting on regulatory capital. King’s College London awarded him a PhD for this work, whose theory was validated abruptly when global financial markets crashed in 2008. In 2010 he accurately predicted the change of financial regime to ‘behaviour-based regulation’; the UK’s Conduct regime launched in 2013 and included core principles he had earlier identified.